“I truly believe in my heart ... that this substance never
entered my body at any point,” Ryan Braun says
at a news conference. ap

PHOENIX 
Ryan Braun makes a wonderful witness. He is forceful. He is firm. He is unequivocal and unwavering.

The problem is with his story.

The National League’s Most Valuable Player has succeeded in reversing a 50-game suspension and returned to the Milwaukee Brewers without missing an at-bat. Braun and his lawyers have raised enough questions about the collection and the custody of his urine sample to persuade arbitrator Shyam Das of a crucial flaw in baseball’s drug-testing system.

Yet as passionately as he proclaimed his innocence Friday morning at Maryvale Baseball Park, and as eloquently as he outlined his defense, Braun’s vindication is incomplete and some of his insinuations are highly improbable. Like Pete Rose and Roger Clemens, Braun’s arguments appear to rest on a flimsy allegation that he has been framed.

Put me down for reasonable doubt as to Braun’s credibility.

If Braun comes off as more convincing than Rose or Clemens, if his lawyered lines are more logical and his hair impossibly perfect, there’s a hole in his story at least as large as the one Prince Fielder left in the Brewers’ lineup. Braun wants us to believe the 44 hours that lapsed between the collection of his sample on Saturday, Oct. 1, and its shipment to a Montreal laboratory the following Monday created a suspiciously wide window for tampering with his sample.

Braun took considerable pains to plant circumstantial suspicion Friday, but he provided neither tangible proof of skulduggery nor theoretical motive. His indignation was consistent with that of a man who had been wrongly accused and denied the presumption of innocence, but he neglected to address the most pertinent parts of his premise — how and why his sealed sample had been spiked.

“There were a lot of things that we learned about the collector, the collection process, about the way the entire thing worked that made us very concerned and very suspicious about what could have actually happened,” Braun said.

Citing possible litigation, Braun declined to detail the specific sources of that suspicion.

“We spoke to biochemists and scientists, and asked them how difficult would it be to tamper with somebody’s sample,” Braun said. “Their response was that if they were motivated, it would be extremely easy.”

Braun neglected to name those scientists. Though some passages of his narrative were persuasively precise — the operating hours of the FedEx offices near Miller Park, for instance — other passages seemed crafted to create a vague impression of malicious mischief in the absence of any actual evidence.

The overall presentation was impressive. Braun sounded sincere and his body language betrayed no anxiety.

“If I had done this intentionally or unintentionally, I’d be the first one to step up and say, ‘I did it,’ ” Braun said. “By no means am I perfect, but if I’ve ever done any mistakes in my life, I’ve taken responsibility for my actions. I truly believe in my heart and I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point.”